The retrial didn't attract anywhere near the same kind of attention that the first trial did--I didn't even know it had started, in fact, until after it was over. Phil Spector, the ex-whiz kid producer, inventor of the Wall of Sound, producer of the unbelievably classic "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes and the underappreciated Ramones album End of the Century, and a standard-bearer for L.A. freak-out paranoia, has been found guilty of murder.
Nik Cohn wrote a profile--admiring and a little wary at the same time--of Spector in 1969 in Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, one of the best rock books ever: "He was demoniac. He'd take one good song and add one good group and then he'd blow it all up skyhigh into a huge mock-symphony, bloated and bombasted into Wagnerian proportions. ... And he looked down from his box and hurled thunderbolts. Added noise upon noise, explosion on top of explosion. Until it wasn't the song that counted, the voices, nothing like that but only the sound, Spectorsound, and the impetus. momentum, lurching and crushing and bursting, and it couldn't possibly be stopped."
Except it was.
Nik Cohn wrote a profile--admiring and a little wary at the same time--of Spector in 1969 in Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, one of the best rock books ever: "He was demoniac. He'd take one good song and add one good group and then he'd blow it all up skyhigh into a huge mock-symphony, bloated and bombasted into Wagnerian proportions. ... And he looked down from his box and hurled thunderbolts. Added noise upon noise, explosion on top of explosion. Until it wasn't the song that counted, the voices, nothing like that but only the sound, Spectorsound, and the impetus. momentum, lurching and crushing and bursting, and it couldn't possibly be stopped."
Except it was.
Leave a comment